Lots of people pass in and out of our lives, but if we are very lucky a few good ones stick.

My mentor, colleague, and friend Budd was one of these good ones, to my everlasting good fortune. When we first visited the High Point Furniture Market together, over thirty years ago, he generously showed me the ropes, touring every showroom and meeting every executive. (Truly, every executive! Sixteen hour days were commonplace on those trips.) Though the industry is full of prickly personalities, and I was then completely inexperienced, after those visits each of them gave me a chance, because I’d come with Budd.

He taught me to learn about the individuals who were leading companies, their backgrounds and temperaments and inter-relationships. He taught me about analyzing returns on capital in cyclical businesses. He taught me to ask about the dealings that are buried in the smallest footnotes of !0-Q’s.

More than all of that, in a business that can seem intensely impersonal, Budd taught me that we can be whole humans at work. In the early days of my career, senior colleagues rarely mentioned life outside the office, and there was sometimes a weird sense that p/e’s and gross margins were the only possible topics of conversation. But Budd talked about his family every single time we ever met, with whole-hearted love and pride, beaming from ear to ear. His joy was contagious.

What a privilege, to learn so much from someone for so long.

May his memory be a blessing.